Are you tired of Christmas music yet or still humming along to all those tunes that make your yuletide bright? Wrapping last-minute presents by the tree without listening to the old classics is like eating turkey on Thanksgiving without the stuffing and gravy.

Allow me to have some fun with this column and give my thumbs-up for a few of my all-time favorites or give my thumbs-down for those songs that make me think I’d rather have root canal than have to listen to them one more time.

Here are my reviews in no particular order.

“The Christmas Song”: Thumbs up. A wonderful classic even though you and I know no one who has ever roasted chestnuts on an open fire.

“The Twelve Days of Christmas”: Two thumbs down. So much wrong with this song, I can’t cover it all. First, who celebrates 12 days of Christmas? Second, what am I going to do with 23 birds, eight maids a-milking plus a mess of pipers, drummers and dancing ladies? I’ll take the five golden rings, sell them off and dump my true love. This song is one that gets stuck in your head until New Year’s Eve when you resolve to never listen to it again.

“Little Drummer Boy”: Two thumbs up. One of my favorites that goes back to a memorable moment when my sister and her glee club performed this classic at a high school concert with a little boy tapping on his snare drum as they marched into the auditorium. Especially beautiful when you hear versions with deep bass voices singing “rum, rum, rum” in the background. The Tabernacle Choir sings it the best for me.

“Deck the Halls”: Thumbs down. The lyrics are fine until you hear the 9,000 fa la la la las. And furthermore, what exactly is a fa la la la la, and have you ever said that? How about, “I just won $50 on a lottery scratch-off, fa la la la la la la la la? I’m going on vacation next week, fa la la la la.” Yeah, right!

“White Christmas”: Thumbs up. Still the biggest selling song of all time. This classic brings warm nostalgia, but it also delivers a touch of disappointment.

In my lifetime, white Christmases have been rare. In fact there used to be a jeweler in New Jersey who promised he would return all your money you paid in his store if it snowed 3 inches or more on Christmas Eve. In 20 years, he never paid off once.

“Dominick the Donkey”: Sorry, my Italian friends, If I had four hands I’d put four thumbs down on this earsore written by a Jewish guy. Annoying and stupid, and who ever heard of a Christmas donkey? “Chingedy Ching, hee haw hee haw. Really? This abomination is quite possibly the worst song of all time. But then again, what do I know? A children’s favorite, it reached number two on the British Billboard charts in its heyday and was just rereleased on Amazon. So hee haw hee haw to me!

“Ave Maria”: Two thumbs up. The most beautiful song with words that no one understands because it’s sung in Latin, I remember when I used to play the vinyl disc rendition by Connie Francis for my mother, who wept every time she heard it. Sung only by the best performers of all time, my favorite version is by the late Karen Carpenter.

“Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”: Two thumbs down — Another children’s favorite, but if you’re a grandmother, do you laugh when Granny in the song gets drunk, wanders out in the snow and is trampled to death by Santa’s reindeer? Then we hear how Granny’s hubby mourns her horrific death.

“Now we’re all so proud of grandpa

He’s been taking this so well

See him in there watching football

Drinking beer and playing cards with cousin Mel.”

Perhaps the best comeback from our sweet grandmothers might be to get together and write a new song called, “Grandpa Got Eaten by Zombie Elves.”

“Winter Wonderland”: One thumb sideways. This is a happy song for me until it gets to these words:

In the meadow we can build a snowman

and pretend that he’s a circus clown

We’ll have lots of fun with mister snowman

Until the other kids knock him down

Bullies! If I saw my headless snowman after I spent hours packing him together, it would have me melting in my own tears.

Let me end with this idea.

One way to lower crime rates in this country would be to place the criminal in a small prison cell with loudspeakers.

Then play the Twelve Days of Christmas and Dominick the Donkey over and over and over until he promises to never break the law again.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Hee haw! Hee haw!

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.